Monday, August 8, 2011

Ribbon Drive AP: Undead 80s Mix

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I don’t remember when it was or how it started, but I remember where and what. I was at a weekly gathering at the Radacombs for the Olympia story games meetup group. I’m not sure why, but I must have done an awful job of pitching Fiasco because somehow I ended up getting handed the job of facilitating a game of Ribbon Drive even though I had never read the book. But I had played it once and had a vague memory of listening to mix CDs and going on a road trip that I thought would guide me through it. I was wrong.

I actually had to refer to the rule book a few times. I read the introduction to my players and stumbled and stammered over my memory of how the game worked. The other players were my roommate Mel, my brother Sean, and meetup regular Veles, and they all wanted to fight me for control of the game. I wasn’t about to let them have it. We all had mix tapes, mine was called undead 80s, a thematic collection of songs by modern bands with an 80s sound singing about death. We picked randomly between mix CDs but naturally since I was facilitating mine was chosen. It opened with the song Fear of Death by Datarock, and the second track was Graveyard Girl by M83.

Oh wait, maybe you’ve never played Ribbon Drive before. So here’s how it works in a walnut shell, which is slightly less condensed then , say, a peanut shell. It’s a game where you tell a story about a group of people on a road trip, and often it’s a story of letting go of your preconceived notions of what your life should look like and just going with the flow. Or something like that. Everyone brings a mix tape (or mix CD, or ipod mux, or laptop with an external hard drive full of music on shuffle, as the case may be), and the first song on the first mix that gets played is used as inspiration for the basic concept of the story; what are we doing on this road trip and why. The second song on that mix is used as inspiration for everyone to create their characters.

Each character has three defining traits and two futures, futures being goals they would like to accomplish in the near future. At least one of these five things need to be taken directly from the lyrics to the second song. You then let the mix play, taking turns framing a scene at the start of each song, using the song as inspiration, and ending the scene when the song ends. The framer says who starts in the scene and the other characters can enter whenever, and the last character to enter can introduce a conflict. The conflict can either be resolved by someone using and crossing out a trait that has come up in play, or the conflict can derail the journey and cause a detour, sending the story off in a different direction, and also switching mix tapes. The game ends when a single player gives up on both of their futures by crossing them off, becoming the protagonist of the story, or when all players achieve at least one of their futures by circling them, making the story an ensemble piece with everyone as a protagonist. It’s a pretty awesome game.

The lyrics to Fear of Death feature a man talking about how his fear of death constantly haunts him and he can’t escape it.
I'm afraid to die
I think about it all the time
It won't go away
It haunts me
I can't get it off my mind
What can I do?
It's just there
That's why I was so quick to notice
Mr. Grey add in the tabloid I was reading aloud
The headline hit home
Fear Of Death, it said

You're disappointed, I can tell
At some level, everyone fears death
I fear it right up front
I don't know how or why it happens
But I can't be the only one…

No I don't wanna leave you
And I don't wanna deceive you
I am all yours
And I never I never intended
For it all to be ended
I appalled, stalled and offended
Now I'm all yours
And forever and ever and ever
And forever and evermore

I do wanna die first
But that doesn't mean I'm not afraid
I'm terribly afraid
I'm afraid all the time
What if death is nothing but sound
Electrical noise, niform, white
Sometimes it sweeps over me
Sometimes it insinuates itself into my mind little by little
I try not to talk to it
Not now, Death...

 After listening to it I posited the idea that the story could be about a man with a terminal disease traveling the country to do everything he wants to do before he dies. Everyone agreed that this was the worst idea ever and instead we went with the idea that the story was about a mortician driving a body across country in a hearse to bring it to a burial. We suggested someone would be a mortician, someone else his assistant, a third person could be someone brave enough to accept a rideshare with these folks, but were stumped about who the fourth character might be until Mel suggested the ghost of the dead guy. That was too awesome to pass up.

Sean wanted to be the mortician, Mel wanted to be the ghost, and Veles wanted to be the assistant. I emphasized that we might want to change characters around after the next song, the song we drew character inspiration from, but the other player’s hearts were set in stone. I promised myself that if no one else would, I would at least try to play this game by the rules and do the guy who wrote this game proud.

The second song, Graveyard Girl, is about a 15 year old teenage goth girl.
Death is her boyfriend
She spits on summers and smiles to the night
She collects crowns made of black roses
But her heart is made of bubble gum

Graveyard girl

Dark rags and red stars
She's the dirty witch of her high school
She worships Satan like a father
But dreams of a sister like Molly Ringwald

"I'm going to jump the walls and run
I wonder if they'll miss me?
I won't miss them
The cemetery is my home
I want to be a part of it
Invisible even to the night
Then I'll read poetry to the stones
Maybe one day I could be one of them
Wise and silent
Waiting for someone to love me
Waiting for someone to kiss me
I'm fifteen years old
And I feel it's already too late to live
Don't you?"

I can't help my love
For graveyard girl       


When I heard the line, “Worships satan like a father” I quickly gave a nod at Sean while pointing my finger from him to the lyrics sheet and back. He got the message and put it down as his first trait. Because a Satan worshipping mortician is just cool. When Sean revealed that after the song, Veles decided he would be playing an Atheist. He took the line “It’s already too late to live” from the song, deciding his character was fatalistic and a little suicidal. Since my character was completely unformed before the second song played, I took each of my traits from the lyrics. I said I was interested in using the lines “I’m 15 years old” or “Death is her boyfriend”. I was about to explain that if I was 15 years old I would be the daughter of the dead man, and if I used the other quote he would be my boyfriend, but Veles’s immediate response to the death is her boyfriend quote was, “So you’re death?”

I decided to jump on that, and used both quotes. “15 years old” was my first trait and “Death” was my second. I was death, masquerading as a 15 year old girl. For my 3rd trait I used another quote, “Heart made of bubble gum” deciding I would have a positive, upbeat personality. I think Mel forgot to take something directly from the song without anyone noticing, but I think that can be easily overlooked because it was her first experience with roleplaying and storygames and her traits were pretty cool. So after we all discussed our futures our sheets ended up looking like this:

Talford Young Radiance (Sean)
Traits: 1) Worships Satan Like a father
2)Mortician licensed driver
3)High tolerance to pain
Future:1)I will add this body to the earthen sanctum that will resurrect the lord of chaos by giving him the flesh of sinners
2) I will make ritualistic pit stops to appease my lord and father

Maurice (Veles)
Traits: 1)Atheist
2)Assistant Mortician
3)It’s already too late to live
Futures: 1) Prove nothing supernatural is happening
2) Provide the corpse a proper burial

Barney (Mel)
Traits: 1) Hungry, very hungry, always finds food to be very important even after death.
2) Crafty, can control live people’s senses
3) Wears a purple hat
Future: 1) Barney gets everyone in the car to eat gravy and chicken tenders with mashed potatoes, bbq sauce and cheese, then goes to heaven or hell.
Future 2) Barney confuses everyone’s senses

Dust Raven (orion)
Traits: 1) 15 years old
2) Death
3)Bubble Gum personality – Upbeat, positive
Futures: 1) I will bring this ghost to the afterlife
2) I will send talford to hell

I loved this setup, and it never would have occurred to me that ribbon drive could be taken in such a decidedly fantastic, supernatural direction, but then again, the rules never say you can’t. I think the thing that really made it work is Veles’s character Maurice, the straight man trying to prove the supernatural didn’t exist, despite every other character being deeply rooted in the supernatural. There were a lot of interesting conflicts and relationships in the different player’s futures as well. So, now we came to running some scenes. The rest of the CD playlist went like this.

03 The Knife - Lasagna
In the first scene, we were at a beach o the west coast, christening our journey by depositing a coffee can of ashes into the ocean. Maurice did the work while Talford danced around stranglely on the dunes behind us. Dust followed Maurice and asked him lots of bright curious questions about what he was doing and what it meant. Thanks to Barney they all began to smell tuna, which they explained by their proximity to the ocean, then they all smelled cat poop, which also explained away  with the realization that the ashes must have gotten mixed up with the cat’s litter. Oops. Dust convinced Maurice to let her scatter the ashes, then ran off to the water’s edge and begin pouring the ashes all over herself, twirling and giggling in the grey cloud.

04 Goldfrapp - Alive
They left and started on their journey, with dust riding in the back with the coffin. Dust took the opportunity to have a nice conversation with Barney, while Maurice asked who she was talking to, then told her there was no such thing as ghosts. She went right on chatting, though all Barney seemed to want to talk about was how hungry he was and all the food he liked. Dust made her first attempts to try to ease Barney into the idea that he needed her help to move on to the afterlife.

05 Shiny Toy Guns - Poison
The trip was interrupted by Talford running over a chicken who was crossing the road, presumably to get to the other side. Talford gave the impression that he had swerved to hit the chicken on purpose, and strengthened that impression by picking up the chicken corpse and drinking it’s blood. While Maurice reacted with academic disgust, Dust talked to it’s spirit and sent it off towards heaven. The chicken was intercepted by Barney who promptly swallowed it, only to have it reappear and continue on it’s way. Dust brought attention to it and Barney made it so they could all see the chicken’s spirit flying away.

06 The Rakes – Terror
Talford made the first stop at an old, haunted looking inn where a strange ritualistic meeting of satanic cultists was taking place. He asked Dust to stay in the car, where she happily spent some time chatting with Barney. Talford attempted to convince Maurice to join his cult but Maurice scoffed at his religious practices and called them ridiculous.

07 Cut Copy - Sands of time
The gang all ended up staying at the satanic inn, with Dust sharing a room with Maurice and Talford in his own room. After Maurice fell asleep, Dust summoned up all the spirits haunting the inn by jumping on the bed and dancing with Barney. She managed to dance all the other ghosts off to the afterlife but Barney still refused to go, having unfinished business to take care of.

08 Does it offend you, yeah – Dawn of the dead
Later that night, Barney visited Maurice in his dreams. Both of them were eating a feast of all of Barney’s favorite foods, and Barney talked to Maurice candidly, telling him that he was the dead body in the car. At the end of the dream Dust flew in hanging from the legs of a flying chicken, then dropped down to safety into a giant bowl of mashed potatoes. She burst out giggling and started a food fight.

09 The Killers - Goodnight, Travel Well
In the morning, Talford and Maurice woke up while Dust continued “sleeping like the dead”.  Barney took the opportunity to give Dust the feeling that there was melted cheese spreading over her face, but she was still out cold. Suddenly a group of cultists burst into the room and demanded to have the child as a sacrifice. Maurice struggled to hold them back and protect her before being held down, while Talford led them in their ritual sacrifice. This was our first conflict and I decided to solve it by using my death trait. They plunged a dagger into Dust’s sleeping chest and her eyes shot wide open, as she sat up with a gasp. In the moment of shock after there was no blood, Dust leapt from the bed and Maurice managed to run away, with Talford joining them before the cultists could turn on him. Dust pulled the dagger from her chest, which left no mark, then told everyone that the blade snapped off when it hit the locket she wore, so it only appeared it was in to the hilt. Lying to keep her cover, of course.

10 The Sounds - Something to die for
After getting back on the road, Talford brought the group to their next stop, a carnival in the middle of nowhere. After sending everyone in, Talford snuck off to steal the intestines from Barney’s corpse and hide them in the recess of a giant knot in a particularly gnarled old weeping willow tree. Having figured out at this point what Barney’s unfinished business was, dust convinced Maurice to buy them all mashed potatoes and gravy from a stand, smothered in nacho cheese, all at Barney’s behest.

11 Hot Chip – Don’t Dance
Talford returned and Dust was excited to see the carnival, so they bought tickets and found a spot in the stands. In an attempt to kill the evil Talford and send him off to hell, Dust convinced Barney to Possess Talford to go make an attempt at the trapeze. Despite Maurices attempts to stop him, Talford went off to climb the pole to the trapeze. Talford/Barney ends up knocking down some of the other performers off while on the way up, sending them all to their Death, which makes Dust very happy and giggly and she runs off to escort their Souls to the next world. Talford/Barney falls due to his complete lack of skill and Talford breaks his arms, our second conflict. Sean decided to solve it with Talford’s trait “high tolerance to pain”, and said that Talford’s arms were only dislocated by the fall and he was able to manage to pop them back into their sockets with Maurice’s help before they all fled the scene.

12 M83 – Too Late
Maurice took the driver’s seat and tried to convince Talford that they should go to a hospital once they were back on the road. Suddenly a fiery hole opened up in the road before everyone, forcing Maurice to stop the car. A demonic sad clown climbed from the hole and demanded that Dust speak to him. He told her that her Death license was being revoked because she encouraged possessions, causing the circus performers who fell to die, and was trying to cause the death of Talford. This was our third conflict, and I decided to solve it with Dust’s trait, 15 years old. “I’m only 15!” she proclaimed in her defense, and the demonic clown took pity and let it slide, only being her first offense. After seeing the demon, Maurice gave up on his future, “Prove nothing supernatural is happening.”

Here we ended up switching CDs to Sean’s mix, which had an eclectic mix of meditation bells, DJ shadow, and some guy who sounded like James Brown. Some of the songs (and scenes) were very short. Next everyone took a quick stop at a school where Talford ran off to Hide Barney’s Corpse’s stomach, and Dust dragged Maurice to the cafeteria so they could both get some more of the food Barney wanted. Sadly the school wasn’t serving chicken tenders that day.

Everyone got back in the car and Talford drove them to the next stop, a tainted Buddhist temple run by bizzarro Buddhists who did their best to do everything the opposite of the way a normal Buddhist would. Hence they served everyone a meal of chicken tenders, but they forbade the use of BBQ sauce. Maurice discussed how he came to terms with the supernatural now and Dust confessed that she was actually death, trying to get Barney’s spirit to the afterlife, and Talford confesses that he was actually steering the whole trip in a big circle to deposit bits of Barney’s corpse at the five points of a giant pentagram, as part of a ritual to summon satan. With everything out in the open, Maurice and Dust agreed to help Talford finish his ritual. Thus Maurice crossed off his second goal, “Provide the corpse a proper burial” and became the protagonist of the story.

In the epilogue, everyone went to the center of the pentagram, after getting some BBQ sauce for Barney’s sake. Talford summoned the devil, using the rest of Barney’s corpse as a host. Dust took Barney’s ghost off to heaven, then barney’s body grew into a giant demonic form, and Dust and Maurice conspired to convince Talford that the ultimate service to his lord would be to offer himself up as a sacrifice. That way Dust would achieve her goal of sending him to hell and Maurice would get some form of revenge for having to work for the crazy bastard for so long. The dark lord ate Talford and Maurice and Dust jumped into the air and high fived each other, pausing in a midair freeze frame. As a result of everything, the Devil rampaged across the earth and Maurice was spared, allowing him to continue his friendship with Dust. Maurice then went on to become the next Death.

We all thought it was a pretty great story and it was extra cool that Joe Mcdaldno showed up soon after the game so we could tell him about it. I was really impressed by the game’s genuinely funny dark humor, and it managed to feel light and whimsical despite the themes of death. Morseo, I was impressed by the ability of the game to flexibly encompass those themes and the supernatural modern setting. I also thought it was really interesting that the protagonist character gave up both his goals but every other character achieved both of theirs. Part of me suspects Veles of being wily enough to plan his goals in a way that he would be likely to have to give them up, but then again, I wasn’t really expecting to complete both of mine, which involved sending two other characters to their final destination. Speaking of which, I can’t believe they made five of those damn movies, seriously.


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